The beater is back from sugury

December 04, 2005, 10:42:40 AM

Well, after a month of intensive care the beater is back on the road. It started out as a burned fuel pump harness that escalated into a full-on prosthetic cargo box. I had to remove the box to get at the harness. The original box was rusted beyond repair, and since this thing ain't worth putting a factory-style box back on, it was decided that a wooden box would be the best thing to extend this poor truck's life by another year or two. The new box is a big improvement over the old one in two key areas - it's 60" wide (inside to inside), and it's flat. The old box was 8 feet long but only about 44" between the wheelwells, so you couldn't lie a sheet of plywood in there. This one is more than wide enough. This box is plenty wide, plenty long, and plenty strong. I've still got to come up with a tailgate and backup lights, it'll require a coat of paint on top of the Pentox water sealer, and next year it'll be getting a new bumper (with integrated tail lights, hence the cheapies on there now) and headache rack, but for now it's drivable. And just in time - our first snow is forecast to fall tonight, with more on Tuesday.

Special thanks to the neighbour across the road whos front end loader provided box-lifting duties, and to my buddy, who provided most of the muscle on account of my bad back prevents me from doing such things for any period of time. The finished product (you'll forgive the mud, it was also test driven to my huntinig spot):